THE NEW YORKER son, Charles, Jr., who is a student at N.Y.U., and a daughter, Diana, who is studying voice. Atlas and his wife met while he was working as a strong man at Coney Island. As she and her mother watched his show one day he noticed them in the audience, and afterward of- fered to carry some heavy parcels they had with them. Mrs. Atlas, Charles, Jr., and Diana have all taken the muscle course and are undoubtedly a lot strong- er than most people. Diana is probably one of the strongest young women in Br<?oklyn. She can bend a small iron bar in the palm of one hand. Charles, Jr., is known to his friends at N.Y. U. as Hercules. The senior Atlas's neigh- bors consider him one of the mildest of men. In his street clothes he has a non- muscular, unobtrusive look. He goes out of his way to avoid disputes. \Vhen on occasion, some large, short-tempered man tries to draw him into a fight, he says, "Please, Mister. I'm a very peaceful guy. Just leave me alone, will you?" Sometimes, however, Atlas is taxed be- yond his patience. Not long ago he was riding in a crowded subway trajn and timorously asked a big, sprawling man to move over <1;nd let a woman sit down. " L . " h 11 h . ". f Isten, t e man to ( 1m, I you don't keep your face out of my busi- ness, I'm going to get up and knock all your teeth out." r\.tlas seized the man by the neck and the trousers, swung hin1 up in the air, and shook him vigorously for several m0111ents. Before they got off the train, the man recognized Atlas and apologized. "He said he was out of sorts because he was feeling bad," Atlas says. "1 gave him a long talk about the value of physical exercise, and as we waited to reach our stations he decided to buy the course." Atlas is apathetic toward night life. On rare occasions he drops into Leon & Eddie's, where he orders orange juice and generally tries to talk some of the customers out of drinking alco- hol, which does not seem to ingratiate him with the management. He spends nearly all of his evenings at home, play- ing operatic or symphonic records on a gigantic radio-phonograph or read- ing about the ancient Greeks and Ro- mans, with whom he feels an athletIc kinship. ,^Therever Atlas goes, he feels called upon to deliver health sermons. "I've never drunk and I've never smoked," he said recently to a man who had just been introduced to him at a cocktail party. "I mean people hand me a cock- tail, I say, 'The hell with it. Give me some orange juice.' They give me a Ir --...,...., , ':; t . l I f ' I \, ' J +tut\\ ,!H l\ t." ,;< , :.' ... <I ,; f, U:\ , ' >- ' 'r :::',:::::i;'; i:i1r ,\ 1 : f1" l ,.j J " : " , >> I .1. , ,, : , ' , : , ' f ! : : L, ' , : :, : 't , " (Ii , :Y ' :"" :',," r :: ) : i ,' .11ti:" J[fJ .. ' :'r ' ' ,, ' , " "," : " :: , ' ' ", i , > : ;.::::: . $ -, '..... ;::::' .: J ... . ... ..-;. ,, ',; ü",,,,' " f 1.:. .I. .... * iW'"", ' " 'r<oò.f:: I^ ,f' Ñt ' , """ 27 ., .f.." f 'J; :tf t1 }ll+' '" , 1.:-(H U I L," ,':, <Íf".' :::" , i : ,\. I: I 1 \ ... .. "." : . "I.. '. i .- ." . - <': '.:'. ,: ? .:..... , :,,' ! '; , ::f ';;: ::f-,:,@ , " U \, ........'< , ":::;-:. . : ): :J..,. . : . ' #": J l ;, ''':r}J; ((And v",hat did you g-etP" . cigar, I sa)', If I smoked it, I'd turn blue in the face.' Rich men call me up. "They say, 'Charlie, I've lost a half- million dollars. I've got to sell my house. I'm going to blow my brains out.' I say, 'You ought to stick your head under water for that statement. Get to exer- cIsIng. Forget it. Burn your bonds. Tear up your stocks. Give away your property. Get on a healthy basis. My God, man, it's the hody that counts. The hell with your possessions.'" Atlas says that he is extremely happy all of the . " I . " h " M tIme. got no wornes, e says. y health is perfect and the business no longer has any competition." Atlas is the last of the famous strong men in the muscle-building field. Lionel Strong- fort, who used to appear in trunks on the pages of the pulp magazines, re- tired years ago and is now believed to be residing on an estate he owns in Germany. Joe Bonomo, another of the great physical-culture men, is in the candy-manufacturing business in Brook- lyJP. Earl Liederman, who has lost much of his once profitable interest in muscle, lives in Hollywood and writes poetry. . In times past, Atlas has wrangled on and off about the theory of exercise with a man named Bob Hoffman, who pub- lishes a magazine called Strength and Health and sells bar bells. Recently however, the row ended when the Fed- eral Trade Commission forced Hoff- man to stop saying that Atlas's course was no good, despite the fact that Hoff- man went to Washington and stoQd 011 his thumbs for the Commission in an am- biguous attempt to prove the superiority of bar bells to Dynamic Tension. Atlas has such complete faith in Dynamic Tension that he is deeply depressed by ad verse criticism. One of his favor- ite ways of demonstrating his system's respectability is to mention a letter he once received from Mahatma Gandhi. The letter read, "I've heard of the won- derful work you are doing and wonder if there is some way you can build me up. M. K. Gandhi." Atlas devised a diet and recommended a series of mild exer- cises for the Mahatma. "I didn't charge him a dime," he says. "I felt mighty sorry for him. The poor little chap, he's nothing hut a bag of bones." -ROBERT LEV\7IS TAYLOR